Despite what the D.C. consultants and establishment have been whispering to them, Republican candidates are finding out that voters are against illegal immigration the more they learn about the issue.
And more Republicans–even those from states far from the border–are planning to use border security–and their opposition to more executive amnesty–as a campaign issue in the midterms. The Obama administration has dumped illegal immigrant juveniles, nearly 90% of whom are teenagers, in every state, and many of those communities are concerned about the long-term fiscal impact that will have.
Politico conceded that “public and private polling shows border control creeping up the list of concerns among conservative voters and independents” and “three major Republican Senate hopefuls – Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Scott Brown of New Hampshire and Terri Lynn Land of Michigan – are airing commercials blasting their Democratic opponents for supporting ‘amnesty’ and attacking ‘lawlessness’ and ‘chaos’ on the border.”
Conservatives already forced House Republicans to pass a bill before the August recess that would prevent President Barack Obama from using federal funds to enact temporary amnesty. And the establishment is beginning to see the writing on the wall on the issue.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee did not even slam conservatives to Politico this time, actually likening Obama’s potential executive amnesty to a “nuclear explosion.” Even a former Mitt Romney adviser told the outlet the sense of urgency for enacting amnesty after the RNC released its Growth and Opportunity autopsy report after 2012 “has gone away.”
On June 5, Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby published leaked photos of illegal immigrants being warehoused in detention centers. When those photos were published, immigration was nowhere near the top of the concerns Americans had, with only 5% of the country thinking it was a top problem facing the nation. Those “photos forced the national media and other outlets to cover the issue. Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report, which was one of the only other outlets that had focused on illegal immigration issues before those photos were published, honed in on the issue even more.”
A month later, illegal immigration was the most important issue facing the country and has been in the top three in every poll since. According to Gallup’s data, the percentage of Americans listing illegal immigration as their top problem is the “highest seen since 2006.” New media outlets like Breitbart News forced mainstream outlets to cover the issue, and, as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) discovered in his primary, voters did not like the lawlessness on the border.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who has been the leader in Congress in trying to block massive grants of amnesty and work permits to protect American workers, said that the mainstream media often do not challenge the spin from the permanent political class of operatives and establishment politicians. And he credited new media organizations for turning the tide on the issue by getting information out to Americans.
“I don’t have any doubt that the new media organizations shifted the momentum as we were heading into this August recess,” Sessions told Breitbart News in a recent interview. “There’s just no doubt about it. I guess it goes back to the Virginia seat, the influence it had there, then it built in the weeks to come and provided the only real source of consistently good information. The reason I think that the message was so strong in the House in the final hours was because it was based on almost indisputable logic and sound principle.”
In a recent Associated Press-GfK poll, nearly 90% of Americans thought that illegal immigration was a serious problem. A majority of Americans want the illegal immigrant juveniles sent back as quickly as possible, with only 13% in a recent Reuters poll wanting the illegal immigrant juveniles to permanently remain in the United States. The AP/GfK poll showed that 68 percent of Americans disapproved of Obama’s handling of immigration. Another Reuters poll found 70% of Americans feel that illegal immigration threatens “traditional U.S. beliefs and customs” and “63% believe illegal immigration burdens the U.S. economy.”
As former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been saying for years, long before the Senate’s Gang of Eight amnesty bill, the permanent political class pushes amnesty even though they know it will decimate American workers of all backgrounds. That is the message that Sessions has been relentlessly hammering for two years. And Sessions emphasized that outlets like Breitbart News have been responsible for the shift in public opinion with its fact-based and original reporting from the border and on how amnesty would impact America’s workers:
What Breitbart has done is huge in that regard. There’s nobody who’s been more effective in a timely, daily basis bringing to the attention of people who care issues of importance, breaking news that plays a key role in where we are today. I think there [are] alot of powerful voices that play out there, but I think anybody that’s in the effort was watching what you guys were doing. I think [Breitbart News Executive Chairman] Steve Bannon was determined, it seemed to me from just watching, it seemed Steve Bannon and the Breitbart team understood how the forces were trying to obfuscate and worked hard to clarify them. It got out to a degree a lot of people couldn’t expect–everybody in the fight was looking for good information, and many were putting out good information, but I do think Breitbart was a particularly powerful voice in the debate.
Laura Ingraham, who has led the charge for border security and American workers on talk radio, blasted the consultants in the permanent political class for thinking, “well, if you don’t do amnesty, the Latinos will never vote for you.” She then added that “if it weren’t for Breitbart, I don’t know if we’d know anything about immigration frankly, because [they] hide the ball so often.”
But Al Cardenas, of the American Conservative Union, is still trying to “hide the ball.” He could not help but tell Politico that the “hard-hitting amnesty positions” are counterproductive. Haley Barbour, while opposing Obama’s executive actions, implied the same, arguing for the need for a comprehensive bill. The Politico reporter bought it, introducing his piece with the words, “So much for that fresh start with Latino voters.”
So much for the mainstream media’s and the establishment’s data.
There has not been a definitive poll that guarantees Hispanics will line up in droves to be Republicans if the party pushes for more amnesty. And nearly ever poll taken of Latinos has found that immigration does not even rank highly as one of the issues they are most concerned about, as the most recent comprehensive Univision poll confirmed.
As Breitbart News reported, “when registered Latino voters were asked to name their most important issues, the results, in order, were: education (21%), jobs (16%), government spending and the deficit (15%), social security (13%), “how what they do will affect my wallet” (10%), health care (9%), immigration (8%), and crime and personal safety (5%).”